During commercial meat production, a beef carcass is subjected to a number of different procedures. The animal is first slaughtered, the hide is removed from the carcass, and the carcass is washed. The carcass may then be contacted with hot water and/or steamed pasteurized, and the carcass may also be subjected to one or more electrical stimulation processes. During commercial meat production, the carcass may be attached to a trolley or shackle at different points in the meat processing line. The carcass then travels along the meat processing line where it is subjected to a number of processes, including those identified above, as well as weighing of the carcass and removal of various portions of the carcass. The carcasses are also inspected at a number of locations along the meat processing line, where certain information regarding carcasses may be collected and recorded by the inspectors and others.
During commercial meat production, it is common to track and identify meat carcasses while they are on the meat production line. Carcasses are tracked for a variety of reasons, including monitoring the efficiency of the meat production facility and to identify and monitor carcasses to ensure that meat has been safely handled and processed. In addition, carcasses may be tracked during meat production so that certain information may be accumulated and maintained while the carcass is in the meat production facility. This information may include the weight of the carcass, the specific type of animal from which the carcass was derived, data about the source of the animal (e.g., breeder, ranch location, etc.), and a variety of other information that may be used to track the carcass. This information may be used for a variety of purposes, including ensuring the meat has been properly aged, aiding and sorting carcasses before they are broken down into meat products for packaging, and tracking carcass information back to the producer of the animal or tracing carcass information from the farm to the packaged meat. In addition, information about carcasses that impact the price of meat, such as quality and cutability, may be collected at different locations in the plant.
Meat producers have therefore instituted tracking systems in meat processing plants. A unique identifier for each carcass that enters the meat processing line is used such that the carcass may be tracked and it can be verified that each carcass has been subjected to each procedure on the meat processing line (e.g., steam pasteurization, washing, trimming, electrical stimulation, and so on).
Furthermore, in response to mad cow disease outbreaks, the United States Government has been pushing for a “trace back” system that allows for a final meat product to be traced back to its lot of origin. Under this initiative, 169,000 producers have volunteered to receive a premises ID number, unique to the lot or origin of an animal. The USDA hopes to begin to issue ID numbers for animals within each lot. Timetables call for tracking of livestock shipments to begin as early as 2009. The idea of having a unique identification number for each lot and then for each animal produced within a given lot provides a way of tracing back any meat product to its origin. However, such a system has several fallbacks. Namely, the management of a database that contains unique identification members for every lot and then maintaining identification numbers for every animal within each lot can become computationally expensive. Furthermore, the management of such a system may become monetarily expensive as people are required to maintain and operate such a database. Another problem with the proposed idea is that in order for such a system to work each animal's identification number must be maintained and registered along at each step in the process. Therefore, redundant information has to be maintained for a particular animal depending on the number of steps that it goes through. For example, if a carcass were subjected to twenty separate processes before it becomes a final product, each process would have to register that identification number. As each part of the animal goes to a different process, the information for each portion of the animal must be saved in the database as well. Again, this requires a large amount of data storage power and management of that system to ensure easy and accurate traceability of an end product back to its origin lot. Also, the proposed solution will not be available for quite some time and the implementation of such a system may be costly for producers and sellers alike.
Another problem with typical meat production processes is that the quality of an animal is typically assigned based on an analysis of the fifth ribeye. Depending upon certain characteristics of the ribeye, the animal will receive a grade. For instance, a high quality ribeye may result in the animal receiving a grade of prime, choice, or select based upon the amount of marbling, size, and sortation of the meat. There are many parts of an animal that may be better than other parts. For example, an animal may have a prime ribeye but the other portions of the animal may only be average at best. However, because the ribeye of the animal was scored as prime, the rest of the animal will receive the same score. This may lead to a misleading score of other portions of the animal. Alternatively, an animal that has a less than prime grade ribeye will receive less than prime ratings for the rest of the portions coming from that animal. There may be some portions of animals that have an equal quality, regardless of the grade of each animal's ribeye.
What is desired is an easy and effective animal and carcass tracking system that provides, among other things, for the quick traceability of an end product back to its origin.